History of Indian and Eastern Architecture

by James Fergusson

One other argument seems to bear directly on this point. From what has been said above (ante, p. 76), it appears that the erection of the topes in Gandhara was spread pretty evenly over the whole time that elapsed from the Christian Era till Buddhism ceased to be the religion of the country, in the 7th or 8th century; and that the most flourishing period was about the year A.D. 400, when Fa Hian visited the country. It seems reasonable to suppose that the erection of the monasteries would follow the same course, and that we might expect their greatest development to be simultaneous. To compress the monasteries and their sculptures within the limits of the first century after Christ would seem to violate all the probabilities of the case.

In addition to all this local evidence, when we come to compare these sculptures with those of the western world, especially with those of sarcophagi or the ivories of the lower empire, it seems impossible not to be struck with the many points of resemblance they present. There are many of the Gandhara bas-reliefs which, if transferred to the Lateran Museum, and labelled as “Early Christian,” would pass muster with ninety-nine people out of one hundred who visit that collection. There may be one or two that might be described as belonging to as early an age as that of Hadrian, but generally they would seem of later date.

Among the ivories, those about the time of Constantine present about the same jumble of the classical orders, the same reminiscence of classical art in the figure-sculpture, mixed up with the incongruities borrowed from extraneous sources which it is difficult to account for; but both in their perfections and their faults they seem so distinctly to belong to the same class of art that it is difficult to believe they do not belong to the same age. The great difficulty here is to know what equation we ought to allow for distance in space which may have the same effect as time in producing apparent differences; but this hardly seems to have been of much importance here.

Against all this may be urged the difficulty of understanding how such direct and important influence could have been exercised by the Byzantines in this remote province without its leaving any trace of its existence on the arts of the Parthians or Sassanians, whose kingdom lay between, and without our having any written record of such intimate relations. It is difficult, of course, but, if the facts are as stated above, such negative inferences must make way before the positive testimony of the sculptures themselves. Till within the last very few years no one dreamt of classical art having any such influence at any age on the arts of Gandhara. That being established in contradiction of all previously conceived ideas, the time at which it took place ought to be ascertainable with comparative facility; and, in so far as any written evidence is concerned, may have been as probably at or after the time of Constantine, as at or after that of Augustus.

It would be easy to extend this argument to any length; but without producing the data on which it is based, or giving references to drawings and photographs which have not been published, it would hardly carry conviction to the minds of those who have not access to means of information not yet made public.[226] To avoid, therefore, being tedious, perhaps I may be allowed to state that, having given the best attention to the materials at my command, the conclusion I have arrived at is, that though some of these Gandhara sculptures probably are as early as the 1st century of the Christian Era, the bulk of those at Jamalgiri and more especially those at Takht-i-Bahi, are subsequent to the 3rd and 4th, and that the series extends down to the 8th—till, in fact, the time when Buddhism was obliterated in these countries.

The discovery of some new fact, or of an inscription on a piece of sculpture either with a date or a king’s name that can be recognised, may any day settle beyond dispute which of these views is the correct one. Meanwhile, however, as the evidence at present stands, it seems hardly doubtful that the theory which assigns the more modern date to these sculptures, is that which accords best with all that has hitherto been brought to light, or with the history of the Buddhist religion as at present known.

If this is so, it is evident that the term Græco-Bactrian, or Græco-Buddhist, which has been applied to these sculptures, is a misnomer. The Bactrians may have sown the seeds of a classical style in these parts, but the art we now find there would be more properly called Indo-Roman or Indo-Byzantine, and must have been nourished and kept up by constant communication between the East and the West during the period at which it was most flourishing, which may be described as that intervening between the age of Constantine and that of Justinian.

From what has been said above regarding the sculptures of Bharhut and Sanchi, it appears evident that the Indians had a school of art of their own before they knew anything of the arts of the western world; but that native art seems to have had very little influence on the arts of Gandhara. The western arts, on the contrary, acting through that country, seem to have had considerable influence on those of India at periods subsequent to the Christian Era. It seems at least almost impossible to escape the conviction that the arts of Amravati and the later caves, say of the Gupta period, betray most marked evidence of Western influence, and it seems that it is only through Gandhara that it can have reached them.

So strongly marked is all this that it may become a subject of an interesting investigation to inquire whether the Greeks were not the first who taught the Indians idolatry. There is no trace of images in the Vedas or in the laws of Manu, or any of the older books or traditions of the Hindus. As repeatedly mentioned, there is as little trace of any image of Buddha or Buddhist figures being set up for worship before the Christian Era, or for a century after it. But the earliest, the finest, and the most essentially classical figures of Buddha are to be found in Gandhara, and, so far as we at present know, of an earlier date there than any found in India Proper.

If General Cunningham’s sculptures or the contents of the Lahore Museum could only be made available to the learned in Europe, with the requisite local information, they would, I fancy, at once supersede the meagre and most unsatisfactory written details which have alone come down to us, and would throw a flood of light on one of the most interesting but most obscure chapters of the history of the commerce and of the early intercourse between the western and the eastern world.